On the last episode of Book Club I kind of got sidetracked into talking about the mental process of interpreting the book rather than the actual interpretation. Book 3 is pretty interesting, at least in my opinion, and seems to mostly focus on the idea of, capital-E Education. People who know me know that I am firmly in the camp that Education, again capital-E Education and not grade k-12 American education system or “higher” education, I.E. college. I put “higher” in quotes cause it’s bullshit but that’s a tangent I’ll try and control myself.
Now, since Socrates is ostensibly trying to sketch out an image of the Perfect City he’s gonna try and control/redefine every aspect of the society that city contains. So, book three starts off talking about religion, specifically talking about the stories of the Gods and how the actions and decisions of the Gods affect the sociological norms of the worshipping society. I agree that the religion of a society has a massive impact on that society. I mean, that seems pretty freakin’ obvious right? Regardless of where that society is on the scale of “incredibly devout” to “mildly apathetic” any story is going to be important. Religious stories and religion itself is, at least in some, possibly large, part, is a guidebook on how to live; the things to strive for, a set of ethics, guide to social interactions, etc, etc.
Obviously, a God is, on some psychological level, gonna be something people think of as better than them and therefore something to change themselves towards. Socrates basically makes the argument that a God will invariably be seen as an Ideal being that is kind of like a goal for the people to emulate and because of this the stories about them should reflect the ideals. Zeus coming down and raping people is the kind of choice that is… well… unethical and no ideal being should act like that. If there is a person that acts like that then it essentially impossible to argue that they actually are a God. God’s are beyond reproach right? So, if a god does something worthy of reproach then they must not be Gods. Socrates essentially lays out a guideline on what kinds of things in the Pantheon of Greek God Lore should be edited out. The Gods shouldn’t be unethical or even overly emotional. If Gods can let there emotions dominate them and make them do foolish things then that could be used by weak people to excuse their own failings in that regard.
Along this line of reasoning Socrates sets out things to get rid of in Poetry, Music, Comedy, drinking, religious stories, non-religious stories, speeches, and all sorts of things. To our own 2021 ideas this all sounds eerily like government controlled censorship of all aspects of our lives. The natural response for people like me is to fully disagree with these ideas. Personally, after consideration, I still disagree. I think that Socrates would say that this is all hypothetical so, while it might be impossible to get the exact right ethical people to set the exact right guidelines and getting the citizenry to 100% trust in that, this city we are describing is hypothetical. For the sake of this conversation we have just accepted that this city has actually achieved that perfection and without that suspension of disbelief the entire thought experiment would be pointless.
It’s like if you found an alien piece of technology that let you defy gravity. If you are going to try to figure out how it works you can’t sit there and say that defying gravity is impossible. You’d just give up. If you really want to reverse engineer it you’d have to start at the beginning with the acceptance that the end goal of gravity defiance is possible. Now, in that scenario you have proof right in front of you that defying gravity is possible while in this City hypothetical there is no proof but it’s logical, as a thought experiment, to assume it is possible and go from there. If you assume it is possible and you try to reverse engineer it and it NEVER makes sense or works then there’s either something wrong with you or with your starting point. Maybe a better example is the strategy in math of Brute Forcing a problem. If you don’t know the equation that makes finding the answer easier you can just plug answers in endlessly until one works. With a topic as hypothetical as the one Socrates is discussing you’ll need to do a whole boat load of these thought experiments and even with a lifetime working at them you may never find The Solution but Socrates would say that finding The Solution isn’t the point. I feel like I’m going on an unnecessary tangent.
The question becomes, even if we did find that perfect set of ethics and that perfect system of education, would it be the right choice to force it on people? It’s one of those annoying philosophical questions that would sooner make you roll your eyes then it take the question seriously. My answer is “no” but it’s almost useless to try and answer myself unless I plan on writing dozens more pages of explanation. You should think about the question yourself. You don’t even need to come to an answer for the contemplation to have been worth the effort but that’s up to you.
For Socrates I think this book, at least so far and on initial reading, actually does not communicate what Socrates’ answer would be. Even though he’s the one positing all these censorship strategies he could be doing it as a smokescreen to posit more nuanced ideas. He certainly does make a whole host of smaller comments and claims about The Arts and Education aspects of society that somehow seem important even if they were fully disconnected from the discussion of if they should be censored.
Here are some of the lines I like, mostly paraphrased to make them more intelligible.
- Hell, as a concept, creates undesired fear in all men that leads them to make irrational decisions.
- Men shouldn’t be allowed to love gifts or money.
- A writer imitates the people in his writings. Narration / exposition is the writer himself without imitation.
- Literacy requires first knowledge of letters. Being good first requires recognizing the forms of goodness.
- “For badness would never know both virtue and itself, while virtue in an educated nature will in time gain a knowledge of both itself and badness simultaneously.”
- The best ruler would be one that truly loves the city. It is easier to do what is best for something if that is also the best thing for yourself. Therefore, rulers should be those who find that what is the most beneficial for the city is also the most beneficial for themselves.
- The best safeguard against becoming unjust is to be truly and properly educated.
- A good “Guardian” makes the enemy unwilling to do harm by guarding over them from without and they make their friends unable to do harm through guidance and guarding over them from within.
One particularly interesting section I like is the idea of how people lose or gain the truth. Socrates says that Opinion departs from our minds either willingly or unwillingly. The departure of the false opinion from the man who learns otherwise is willing while that of every true opinion is unwilling. People are unwillingly deprived of good things and willingly of bad things. Being deceived of the truth is bad and having the truth is good. Men lose truth from being “Robbed”, “Bewitched”, or “Forced”.
–Robbed means being persuaded to change via speech or forgetting via time.
–Bewitched means being Charmed or Terrified away from truth via pleasure or fear.
–Forced means leaving the truth due to the effect of some intense pain or grief.
Here are some statements that are either disagreeable or at least need more clarification.
- All, starting at birth, should only do that which they are needed / “destined” to do.
- Those destined to be “guardians” should never be shown great emotion, know of hell, or drink alcohol.
- The way to find the best of men is to test them. Test their ability to combat being robbed, bewitched, or forced. Test their ability to guard over enemies from without and friends from within. Those that remain “untainted, harmonious, and graceful” should be lifted and the failures rejected out of the Guardian designation.
- Only the rulers and the doctors should be allowed to lie.
- Only Decent craftsman should be allowed so that all are imbued with decency.
- Sex should have nothing to do with real love since pleasure is intrinsically linked to bad.
- If living requires the entire life to be dedicated to combating a disease you should reject medicine and continue their “work”.
- Doctors rule over bodies with their souls and should therefor let their body experience sicknesses to gain knowledge. Judges rule over souls with their souls and should not harm their soul by trying to experience being unjust. A good Judge should be old, a “late learner of injustice”.
Near the end the book Socrates combines everything he’s said into a sort of parable imagining of what that city would look like. There is apparently a Greek story about a man that founded Thebes using Giants he grew in the ground. Socrates explains that the people of the city should be like those giants grown underground. The people should reared and grown with perfect precision and purpose so that when the job of creating them is finished and they rise above ground they are perfectly outfitted to make plans for the land that is their “mother”, to defend that land if anyone attacks, and to think of and love all other citizens as brothers born of the same Mother or, in other words, the Earth.
These people should believe in this tale. They are all certainly brothers but the gods mixed different elements, Gold, Silver, and Bronze/Iron into them as they were fashioned underground. Into those competent they mixed Gold. Into the Guardians, and the Auxiliaries to the rulers, the Gods mixed silver. Into the Farmers and craftsmen the Gods mixed Bronze and Iron. While people are likely to produce offspring of their same element any element can come from any element. People of Bronze can come from Gold and vice versa. Because of this the most important of all tasks is to keep a careful watch of the children to see which element is mixed in their souls with zero bias whatsoever to ensure that all are assigned their accurate value. The people all should believe in these rules as if there was some prophecy stating that the city will entirely be destroyed if people are incorrectly put into the wrong group.
Socrates then asks the group if there would be a way to convince a citizenry that this is the true way of things and even if the best story to convince them would only work on the second generation of the city, who could be told the story from birth, it would be a good for making them care more for the city and one another. They don’t have an answer and at least in book 3 Socrates doesn’t either.
The book ends with Socrates explaining how the “Guardians” of the city should live. I think the “Guardians” are mostly soldiers, prospective rulers, or “auxiliaries” to the rulers, but at least so far they’re pretty poorly defined. Anyway, Socrates says the should live in that part of the city that affords them the most control over the city. They should, in every possible way, be made sure to NEVER harm the people through “licentiousness, hunger, or some other bad habit”. In order to ensure this the Guardians should be receive in “wages” from the citizenry only what is necessary for their survival and health. They shall never have a surplus or lack of sustenance. They will not be allowed any private property of anything outside of what’s “entirely necessary”. No one shall have any house or storeroom that anyone at all cannot enter if they wish to. They’ll eat all together and live together. They’ll be told that because they have a Divine sort of Gold and Silver mixed into their souls by the Gods then they have no further need of gold or silver or valuables and for them to posses wealth in any way is unholy. Thus, by having no desire for things of wealth they are saving themselves as well as the city. If anyone of the Guardians ever do possess any private land, houses, or currency then “they themselves as well as the rest of the city are already rushing toward a destruction that lies very near”.
So ends book 3.
The Mind of Joshypoo 